Why writing in games matters: Part II?challenges of interactive storytelling

In part one of our three-part look at the world of game writing, we saw what …

The unique challenges of interactivity

Last week, when we began our series of articles on game writing, I knew that the topic would kick up some lively discussion, but I was unprepared for the flood of e-mails and messages I received once gamers and industry veterans had a chance to mull the issue over. Some people agreed with the points I made, some disagreed, but the best part of working on this series has been the chance to talk with so many people who take gaming seriously—people who see it as an emerging art form.

One of these conversations was intriguing enough that I asked the gentleman to organize his thoughts so we could include them in part two of our series on game writing. Ian Christy is currently the senior game designer at Radical, working on Crash of the Titans. He's been a part of the industry for 10 years, working on Starsiege, Tribes 2, Scarface, and "other odds and ends." With an academic background in visual design, illustration, film, and literature, as well as his extensive experience in the industry, he's uniquely equipped to look at game writing.

His basic premise? You can't just grab a writer and throw them into development to make a successful game; being able to understand how games work is an absolute necessity for wordsmiths. Here's Ian's take on the business and craft of writing for video games.

"Linear" and "user-driven" do not make for easy bedfellows

Writing for games is too often attempted as a linear exercise, which might be okay for an utterly linear game like Gears of War, but typically falls down the moment the game offers choices or branches, as the writing then has to adapt to cover emergent situations—not an easy thing to do. Throwing a film writer or novelist at a game architecture encounters this problem, especially when the person isn't an experienced gamer or doesn't play many open-world or RPG titles.

An open-world, user-driven game is a tough nugget to crack. Trying to infuse it with a linear story line is almost a paradox, because by its very nature, a completely user-driven experience means a user-defined narrative, where the developer provides the seeds, events, tools, and mechanics for users to employ and experience as they choose. However, married to an IP developed from a filmic source, the development team must find a way to saddle, or bridle, the open-world experience with an overarching linear narrative.

Three approaches to story-telling in games

There are a handful of approaches to this, though most boil down to treating story as something that is divided into chapters unlocked though player successes achieved in the open world. Some games are blatant about this, like Spider-Man 2, showing the player a checklist of goals needed to unlock another piece of story. The problem with this is how flat and lifeless the experience for the player is story-wise between chapters. Sure, the gameplay is king, but there could be more there to help the player feel invested as well as empowered.

Another approach is less overt: embedding the story into missions that exist in parallel and don't compete with each other directly, though one plot may occlude or cancel out another. This is the "choose your own adventure" approach that I like, though haven't seen it developed deeply or richly enough to date. Grand Theft Auto does this but eventually reins the player into a linear narrative that does progress the story. However, this story is often at odds with the gameplay that the player experiences otherwise. A great example of this is in the San Andreas installment, where my beefcake, cop-killing character is depicted in a cinematic cowering from a youth holding a pistol. The linear story did not adapt to the character's changes despite affording players so many, many ways to define said character for themselves.

A third approach is a hybrid of the first two: having "choose your own adventure" for taking over areas of the game worlds, thereby unlocking bookend-type missions that serve as progressive chapters in the overarching linear narrative. The difference is that players are rewarded for making their character act more like the specific IP's main protagonist. This approach uses that singular focus as a means to draw the player into the story being told, rather than laying story on a player after letting the player run about willy-nilly and creating a potentially contrary story on their own.

This last approach requires designing, building, and writing layers of contextually driven character dialogue, AI, and animations for every character in the game, with under-the-hood procedural systems to react not only to the player's actions but also to respond to massive compilations of statistics. The dynamically responsive results provide constant feedback to players on how well or poorly they are progressing toward the game's focal goals.